Saturday, April 16, 2011

Kerala Paal Payasam/

Kerala paal payasam is one of a kind. It has basic ingredients milk, rice and sugar, but tastes like heaven. If you haven't tasted one, you should try this soon! Paal payasm is equivalent to the rice pudding here and is served during special feasts or poojas like baghavath sevai ( pooja for goddess durga/ bhagavathy).

The payasam has a slight pinkish color from the reduction of the milk and red rice( chomanantha ari) ,exclusive of kerala. i had some red rice brought from India which I used. One could totally replace it with basmati rice too!
Another method is to do the payasam in the pressure cooker, which gives a pink color, but some how I doesn't give the same flavor. I cooked mine in the bottom of a pressure cooker (without lid).Stir constantly taking care not to burn the milk. the aim is to reduce the milk to half while the rice gets cooked in the milk. Once the milk is reduced your desired consistency, add the sugar. Adding sugar earlier will not let the rice cook well.

So you need a little patience and that is totally worth all the effort. You don't need any garnishing for this payasam.

Here is our family recipe!

The rule of thumb is 1 fistful of rice for a litre ( 4 cups) of milk. I measured my fistful of rice which was 1 & 1/2 tbsp.